Coming of age under Hitler and Stalin: the everyday life of adolescent girls in occupied Latvia

This article explores the possibility of the continuation of everyday life in occupied Europe through a case study of the lives of twenty‐five adolescent girls and young women living in Latvia between 1939 and 1944. Late adolescence is the period in which young women are struggling to establish some degree of independence, especially through leaving the parental home and entering the labour market. These transitions are the conventional markers of adulthood in modern societies. The article explores how occupation by the Soviet Union and the Third Reich affected daily life and the speed and nature of the transition to adulthood.